A Different Man

Jan 20, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki pays wry tribute to the starving artist in his sad and funny update of Henri Murger’s classic book.

Sep 25, 2013 — Roberto Rossellini’s tale of modern sainthood demonstrates the importance of opening oneself to the wider world.

Nov 14, 2012 — Jean Luc Godard’s exuberant, multipronged attack on the bourgeoisie is both theater of the absurd and political horror.

Jan 17, 2012 — At once a political epic and a radical gesture in personal filmmaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is an unexpected, unlikely triumph. It was a film that Hollywood didn’t want to make—every studio in town turned it down—that went on to secure...

Jul 6, 2011 — Cinephilia was the buzzword at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about that, of course, but the 2011 edition (the festival’s sixty-fifth—it’s the oldest continuously running film festival in the world), which ran from...

The Cannes Film Festival may have star-studded red carpets, but the winners below are its true legacy.

Nov 8, 2010 — To say that Lars von Trier deals in provocation and controversy is like saying John Ford made westerns: obviously true, but far from giving a measure of the director’s importance. Ever since The Element of Crime polarized critics at Cannes...

Feb 16, 2010 — It may be news to many, but in addition to creating such larger-than-life characters as The Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter and Howards End’s Henry Wilcox (not to mention, once upon a time, the titular protagonist in James Ivory’s...

Feb 10, 2010 — Revanche begins with a reflection of trees in a lake at twilight. They’re seen upside down—an image of nature reversed—yet the earth is eerily calm. This almost otherworldly illusion arouses a viewer’s awareness of perspective, which is then disturbed by...

Jan 18, 2010 — Steven Soderbergh’s Che depicts the two military campaigns that defined the rise and fall of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, hero of the Cuban Revolution, who became in death a global icon of militant leftism—and of inchoate adolescent rebellion. As the latter,...